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Opinion

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Outstanding sequel to The Urban Homestead. Making It contains the simplest, fastest soap recipes I've ever found. Their description of how to humanely kill a chicken is mercifully brief and business-like. Coyne and Knutzen's pithy directions are much easier to follow than many DIY books, including John Seymour's classics. Highly recommended.

I think this book is a stand-out in the Green DIY crowd in that it 1) avoids preaching and 2) the narrators sound likeable. The book has a sense of humor and many of the projects are very simple and most are economical. While you can complete many of the projects using the instructions provided, some of them might require a little more research on-line to feel comfortable about, for instance building a chicken coop. Overall, great introductions to a lot of cool, cheap, useful projects for the home.

There are a lot of "new-to-me" recipes for household products. I think I want to buy my own copy, but first I need to do some research. Some of the useful recipes call for olive oil, and I wonder how this would affect the septic system. (Or the city sewage system, for others.) And with the mostly blue print, you cannot photocopy the best ideas.